What would you do to save a few pennies? Thirty to 45 percent of shoppers will remember their reusable grocery bags to save on a five-cent bag tax. Consumers will wash out and return 70 to 80 percent of recyclable bottles to cash in on bottle bill refunds. But fewer than two percent of coffee lovers will bring their own mugs to Starbucks to save a dime on their beverage. Why do people work hard to save on their bags and bottles but not on their cups of joe?

What reusables are up against

Many coffee shops have tried to promote reusable mugs by offering a 10-cent discount to customers who bring their own cups to the café. Starbucks, Seattle’s Best, and Peet’s all offer the discount, as do many local coffee shops, like The Hof and Ugly Mug in Portland and Cloud City Coffee in Seattle. Chances are, if a place sells coffee, it will give you a discount for remembering your tumbler. But few caffeine addicts are taking advantage.

The same few pennies charged as a fine turn out to be much more effective at curbing wasteful practices than when they come in the form of a small bonus or savings. Consumers hate being fined but rarely go out of their way to save a few cents (just think of all the times you’ve passed on coupons).

Several other obstacles stand in the way of a reusable-mug renaissance: carrying around a tumbler is inconvenient; unique travel-mug sizes can give baristas trouble; and, interestingly, the paper coffee cup has also become a status symbol, a signal of wealth and a busy schedule, and consumers are loathe to give that up.

So what can we do to meet these challenges and make reusables the new norm in Cascadia?

What works: Two case studies

Loss aversion: The case of the bag tax

Bag taxes, like those in Corvallis, Seattle, and Bellingham, charge consumers 5 to 10 cents for each disposable grocery bag they use per shopping trip. This charge has proven to be highly effective in prompting customers to bring their own bags to the store and avoid the fine. In Seattle, nearly 50 percent of stores reported a decrease in disposable bag use six months after the implementation of a 5-cent charge on paper bags. Ireland, which introduced a bag tax of about 19 cents in 2002, saw an even more dramatic decrease: consumers there used 94 percent fewer disposable bags in the first year of the program (!), and they continued to keep their consumption under 10 percent of former usage five years later.

It’s the same five cents, but when it’s a tax and not a refund, it carries a lot more weight with consumers.

Consumers are much more motivated to avoid a fine than to take advantage of a reimbursement, according to numerous behavioral economics studies (like this one). The bag tax in Montgomery County, Maryland, provides a good illustration. Before the County implemented its five-cent charge on disposable grocery bags, many stores offered a five cent bonus to customers who brought their own shopping bags. These stores saw almost no increase in reusable bags: 82 percent of customers used disposable bags in bonus stores, compared to 84 percent in stores offering no bonus. Once the 5-cent tax on disposable bags kicked in, however, use of disposables plummeted, and only 39 percent of customers used the taxed bags. It’s the same five cents, but when it’s a tax and not a refund, it carries a lot more weight with consumers.

But implementing a fee on disposable hot drink cups would also mean battling industry pushback. Though jurisdictions such as Kassel, Germany; Toronto, Canada; and the nation of South Korea have attempted to introduce such a fee, none has yet succeeded. For example, McDonald’s successfully challenged Kassel’s 30-cent charge on disposable cups in restaurants and cafés and eliminated the program from all cities in the country (see page 45).

The impact of income: The case of bottle bills

Bottle bills also offer a small cash motivator to change consumption habits, and they yield even greater participation rates than bag taxes. Two Cascadian jurisdictions, British Columbia and Oregon, have bottle bills. In these places, customers pay a five- to ten-cent deposit on every beverage bottle they purchase and get the money back when they return the empty and clean bottles to the store or other collection facility. Bottle recovery rates in these two jurisdictions are an impressive 70 to 80 percent, well above the United States’ national bottle recovery rate, which remains persistently below 40 percent.

Low-income people disproportionately drive the success of these programs. In Santa Barbara, California, recyclers with incomes under $25,000 receive 58 percent of all bottle return refunds, representing returns of far more bottles than they personally consume (see page 15).

Since 2014, the Binners’ Project, a group in Vancouver, British Columbia, has been advocating for a bottle bill-like program for coffee cups. To prove there is high interest in the program, it hosts an annual one-day event called Coffee Cup Revolution and offers a nickel for every cup turned in that day. In the latest Coffee Cup Revolution, binners across Vancouver collected 31,000 coffee cups in just four hours.

Despite high participation, the Binners’ Project notes that there are numerous barriers to implementing a deposit program on hot drink cups in British Columbia, including program expense. Bottle bill programs remain viable because aluminum and plastic bottles can yield high-quality recycled products, which is not yet true of paper cups. Most hot drink cups have a polyethylene inner coating that allows them to hold liquid but also makes them expensive to recycle. In fact, only a handful of jurisdictions in Canada and the United States have recycling facilities that can process these cups, including Ontario and San Francisco. Even in these places, finding a market for the recycled product is difficult. Most often cups are shipped to Asia for processing into low-quality paper pulp. The Binners’ Project hopes that in the long-term a refund system could drive recycling technology innovation and change the game for disposable cups.

Is there a better price point?

Is ten cents just not worth the trouble of toting your own tumbler? The fact is, bringing your own mug to a café is inconvenient. Just to save one measly cup from the landfill, you have to remember your tumbler and lug it around all day.

Commuter cups can be troublesome for baristas, too. Container sizes often don’t correspond to menu sizes, which makes pricing ambiguous. Is this particular Seahawks cup a grande or a venti? Add to this confusion the barista headaches of dirty mugs and tumblers that don’t fit on the steamer, and you’ve got another serious obstacle to reuse.

And for coffee lovers, there’s the missed chance to show off your cosmopolitan lifestyle by slinging around a fresh paper cup. There’s just something about that crisp white cylinder that’s hard to let go of.

If Cascadian cities taxed disposable coffee cups, they would likely curb consumption, because fees change behavior more than discounts.

Cafés on the University of Washington’s campus offer a 25-cent discount to customers who bring their own mugs, and they report that about 12 percent of beverages bought on campus are filled in personal mugs. Similarly, Seattle University offers a 20-cent discount for customers toting their cups, and it sees 13 percent participation on campus. Though that’s a nice bump up from Starbucks’ 2 percent refillable rate, it still isn’t comparable to the success of bag taxes and bottle bills. It’s clear, then, that price isn’t the only factor stopping customers from lugging a mug.

If Cascadian cities taxed disposable coffee cups, they would likely curb consumption, because fees change behavior more than discounts. So this proposal is worth considering, even though it carries a number of implementation obstacles. Passing a new fee on coffee cups is unlikely to be popular with customers or coffee shops, and it doesn’t address barista concerns of unique sizes and clean cups.

That said, there may be a different option, one that might grow organically until it trims the pile of over 2.3 billion (yes, billion) disposable hot drink cups thrown away in Cascadia every year. (That equals two-and-a-half cups thrown out by every Cascadian every week!) Read on…

Or is price the wrong question altogether?

Maybe price, tax, and bonus are the wrong questions—or at least not the first questions we should be asking. Changing the culture of reusables could reveal an even more effective path forward, addressing some of reusables’ more cost-resistant barriers.

As Cascadia has pioneered so many green cultural firsts, and indeed become known for its green soul, why not take on one more such opportunity—especially one tied to another of our cultural icons: coffee. In fact, we’ve already got some great example programs in our own backyard.

Western Washington University (WWU) in Bellingham piloted a mug-share program in 2013 that aimed to do just that. The program targeted two major obstacles customers identified to bringing their own tumblers: 1) remembering the cups and 2) carrying them around all day. Participants in the mug share were able to take their beverages to go in reusable tumblers available in campus cafés. They could drop their dirty cups off later at any other participating café to be washed. Mug sharers had to return one tumbler before checking out another or pay a $15 replacement fee. This helped ensure mugs didn’t walk off too frequently or collect in dorm rooms.

WWU isn’t the first place to try a mug share. Many other universities have done so, including the University of Northern British Columbia and Whitman College. A small startup company called Good to Go even tried starting an exchange in New York City, in which customers would keep their own lids as a sign of membership in the exchange and just trade out tumblers at participating cafés.

A mug exchange could provide a number of benefits in addition to addressing customer convenience. Shared cups could correspond to standard drink sizes and fit espresso machines and frothers. Participating cafés could also cut down on water consumption. According to a Starbucks report from 2000, if just 10 customers per hour chose a reusable mug in each store, instead of a paper cup, Seattle’s Starbucks locations could save well over one million gallons of water annually, even after accounting for the extra dishwashing.

A caffeinated culture shift

The promise of a mug share program doesn’t stop with its fix for the annoyance of having to carry around your own cup—-it also builds a system that advertises reusable mugs as a social norm. The disposable coffee cup has become a sign of wealth for many: an indication of a busy schedule, an adult palette, and a great sense of style. And social norms are among the most powerful of influencers, even when we think they have no effect on us.

But a well-established mug exchange program, with branded, eye-catching tumblers, perhaps designed by local artists, could invert that sense of status and make going reusable something to be proud of. Cascadian cities could start mug exchanges that span across our many trademark coffee shops. With a café on nearly every corner, imagine how easy it would be to drop off your used tumbler. Or neighborhoods, universities, office buildings, and company campuses could start their own exchanges. Or coffee chains themselves could launch them, aiming to get their own branded tumblers in wide circulation before their competitors do. Perhaps mug exchanges could transform reusables from something hard to remember to something hard to forget.

Notes: UW reports that 5,000 disposable coffee cups are thrown out on campus on a typical day. This number is approximately one-quarter on weekends and holidays and approximately one-half during the summer months. As a result, I estimated that slightly over one million coffee cups are thrown out on campus every year. Reusable mugs account for 141,000 on-campus beverage sales per year, equivalent to approximately 12 percent of all on-campus beverage sales.

The number of disposable coffee cups used annually in Cascadia is difficult to verify. US EPA reports that 1.3 million tons of paper plate and cup waste is generated every year (Table 4). Assuming that about half of this is from cups and using an average paper cup weight of 11 grams, I calculate that approximately 54 billion cups are thrown out in the United States each year. This corroborates the most common estimate I found of 58 billion paper cups tossed in the United States each year (cited here, here, and here). Cascadian states of Idaho, Oregon, and Washington together account for about 4 percent of the total United States population, and assuming rate of coffee cup use is somewhat constant across the country, that means residents of these three states together chuck over 2 billion cups per year, or nearly 165 cups per person per year.

Canadian disposable cup consumption per person is a little lower than in the United States. Estimates suggest that 1.6 billion cups are thrown out in Canada per year, and with BC making up a little over 13 percent of the total Canadian population, this means BC residents throw out about 209 million cups per year, or 44 cups per person per year.

Power our brains! We’re a reader-supported nonprofit.

Comments

Jerome parker

March 8, 2016 at 9:02 am

Impressive research! Well written. The one area not addressed was the actual coffee drinking experience. Why is there such a demand for paper cups in the first place? Are people in such a rush they cannot enjoy the civil experience of sharing a public space while drinking coffee? Is life on the run a good life?

I’d love to use my own mug, but I’ve never found a travel mug that felt good to drink from. I have a collection of travel mugs sitting in the kitchen cupboard. Nothing portable feels as good as a paper cup. And, yes, a Starbucks stop is usually on the way to somewhere. No time to sit and savor.

I can’t really find an excuse for cafes in the US who do not only use single-use cups for drinks on the go, but also for customers staying in. It is a terrible practice for the environment, and also really bad customer service, it feels like they don’t want to bother and give you a good cup that they would have to collect and wash after you! I actually never saw that in any other country but the US.

Good article. Although I think reducing waste and resource consumption is the best reason to use one’s own mug (and I don’t often enough!), seems to me $0.10 off for doing so at Starbucks is a pretty good “rewards” program for those of us who drink the basic tall drips – much better than the “rewards” they advertise. Has to save Starbucks some money on cups, too.

In Victoria. we’re told we can put our coffee cups in the blue box and they’ll be recycled. Don’t know if they actually are. CBC Marketplace also did a recent show where they found Starbucks cups placed into the store’s recycling container (for customers) ended up in the trash dumpster- that was in Toronto. Shouldn’t assume something is recycled just because it’s put into a blue or green container!

How about a rewards/loyalty card/system where you get a stamp/credit if you buy a drink AND bring your own cup – then once you have 10 stamps the 11th drink is free 🙂
If you don’t have your own cup, then no stamp…

That’s a really good idea, i stumbeld across that idea myself aswel. Do you know, by any chance , a company who does such a thing ? Currently I am researching the different options to incentivizing customers to refill their reusable mug.

I totally feel you. Here is a similar thing that a particular large, local coffee chain does, which I find maddening:

When I go through the drive-through, as I place my order I mention that I have my own cup (they call it a “personal cup”). Then when I reach the pick-up window, I find that to save time, they have made my beverage in a paper cup, the contents of which they then proceed to pour into my personal cup, and THROW AWAY the paper cup. A worse outcome than if I had just ordered my drink in a disposable cup in the first place!

I have found that if I go inside, they will make my drink in my cup and not waste a paper cup in the process. So when time allows, that is what I do.

Just remember, when your barista is steaming/foaming and prepping your drink, he/she is using the same implements clanging around the inside the home-brought mug of the patron in front of you. Who knows if that mug was cleaned. A major chain we all know hesitated doing the mug thing due to this very reason. So please, properly wash your mugs!

I have observed many baristas who wipe the implements with a bleach-soaked rag between uses, for just this very reason. Of course, who knows how consistently this is done, especially during busy times! So having a clean mug is always best.

I have personally worked at many different cafes and I feel like I should mention that the norm is actually not to steam the milk directly in the cup but in a cold metal “pitcher.” It’s completely unrelated to hygiene but due to how the milk moves while it’s being steamed; it would just overflow and it would impact the overall quality of any steamed drinks for various reasons. So understanding this process I don’t see how bringing a disposable cup with be a concern for hygiene! The nozzle is cleaned after every use for cleanliness and hygiene but not necessarily for the concern of people’s spread of germs!

Good idea on having an artist designed cup. I suggest that the design includes a clearly marked size. Participating coffee shops could have a separate per ounce or ml price schedule separate from their throw-away menu. It would also be cool to have a holster design to carry the cup which would attach to a belt, messenger bag, backpack, or handlebar.
Most coffee shops will rinse out your carry-in cup, heats it up good too to make your joe stay warm longer too.

Great article, and I do agree that the cup exchange is a good idea, but I’m having a hard time understanding why it is so inconvenient to bring your own cup. I must be one of the 2%.

About five years ago my wife and I got into the habit of bringing our reusable cups with us to work in the morning and keeping them with us throughout the day to serve our caffeinated beverage needs. I was already in the habit of bringing my work bag with me and it turns out my reusable cup fit nicely into an outside pocket on my bag.

This small change to our lives has really paid off. Based on a conservative estimate of two beverages per person per work day, the two of us have avoided the need for 5,000 disposable cups, with the cup discount saving us a total of $500 over that time.

I’ll admit that it was hard to get into the habit at first, but now it feels natural to bring our own cups and feels odd when we don’t or can’t, such as when we are on vacation.

Maybe other folks could speak to why they personally don’t bring their own cup?

Unless I misunderstood it, the Starbucks Report assumed that washing the re-usable cups did not use additional water (“the greater use of in-store reusables did not measurably increase dishwasher use”) or labor (“the additional step of asking customers ‘for here or to go’ and busing tables did not seem to require more labor.”) If so, we should correct those measurement errors before concluding that re-usables have any net benefit. I’m pretty sure patrons will at least rinse their mugs between uses, and if they rinse with 32 ounces of water, well, that’s the same amount of water as consumed by the manufacture of a paper cup, according to appropedia.org. If the cup-washing water is heated with fossil fuel, we should subtract that additional environmental impact from these results.

During the whole paper-vs-plastic bag debate, Sightline taught me that it’s FAR more environmentally beneficial when we purchase sustainable groceries (read: vegetarian) to put into the bag. This cup debate feels like it’s aimed at a similarly unimportant target.

Our addiction to convenience is what is preventing many logical solutions to “saving the planet”. I also do not feel that it is a huge inconvenience to bring my own mug. Most coffee places I patronize empty the shot into a small container and the milk is steamed in a pitcher, then both are poured into the coffee cup. I do not feel there is a sanitation issue.
Thanks for the indepth article.

I get it, but the business want to sell a cup of coffee and forgetting a mug should not prevent them from getting a sale. Here is the other issue… next time you go through a Starbucks drive through, ask them to take your old paper cup and throw it away for you… they *won’t* on health reasons alone. It’s been in your mouth. Right? Now imagine your dirty coffee mug. They will take that, touch it, wash it and fill it? Sure. Why not. No health issues there? It’s not comparable to bags. But a food worker has public health issues to be concerned with. So sanitary cups are still a better option than a travel mug that has been in someone’s mug. 🙂

I’m an intern at a company called Tulper, located in The Netherlands. And Currently I am researching the different options to incentivizing customers to refill their reusable mug. Does anybody know some best practices i could use in this research?

I loved this article. It touches upon all the points I think. We need to change culture, impose consumption taxes, utilize deposits. But even then, the 1000 lbs gorilla is the inconvenience of carrying around a bulky travel mug most of the day for only a few minute’s worth of use. That’s why we came up with the Stojo Pocket Cup. It’s the world’s only collapsible reusable cup designed specifically for coffee drinkers. It comes with fill lines at 8, 10, 12 oz, can fit under an espresso machine, and collapses into a 2″ thick disc in seconds that is leak proof once sealed, so you don’t need to worry about rinsing until you get home. It’s also dishwasher safe. We’re working on a 16 oz version with straw (available for pre-order on indiegogo.com now) because that is the most common size in the US. But the 12oz is popular in Europe and Asia where people don’t drink such enormous portions. Let us know what you think. We’re in the game to end disposable cup use through innovative design, snazzy looks, and convenience!

Was curious about the collapsible cup so I went to the indiegogo.com website. I couldn’t find the cup but some of the things I saw with the prices they were going for !!! Talk about expensive !!! I can only imagine what the cup is selling for.

Starbucks prides itself on having copied Italian coffee culture and made it popular first in the US and then all over the world. This could not be more misguided.

Italian coffee culture consists of walking into a “bar” [sic] ordering your favorite form of drink, waiting for it and consuming it at the “bar”. Or if you really have time to loiter, you can get it served to you at your table and linger.
Couple of things: 1) you don’t take your coffee “to go”, you don’t need to walk around with a mug looking like an idiot. Hence, there is no need for disposable cups. 2) Coffee tastes much better out of a ceramic cup, you should try it. It really is different.

I was appalled when I found that in recent years even in Italy very busy locations like airports, train stations and train restaurant cars have found it easier to ditch the reusable cups for paper or plastic. I think that’s a terrible loss.

I have never once thought of a paper coffee cup held in someone’s hand as denoting cool, urbane, chic, or successful. I only pity the horrible taste and the ridiculous look.

(And don’t get me started on how long it takes american “baristas” to crank out an espresso drink. It’s called espresso for a reason: because it’s supposed to be fast! Why does it take 5 minutes? Who needs the foam art?
Not to speak of the ridiculous levels of personalization that people demand. Are you kidding me? Just drink the damn coffee like every other adult.)

“Chances are, if a place sells coffee, it will give you a discount for remembering your tumbler.”

You’d think if they wanted to encourage this behavior, they would publicize it somewhere. I have never seen any coffee shop that mentioned this, either visually on the menu, or mentioning that I was saving money when I brought a mug.

I’m sure there do exist cafes that offer such a discount, but either I’ve never been to one, or they didn’t want me to know it.

I wonder if there’s a simpler explanation. Have you ever had a travel mug that you actually liked? I’ve got about 6 in my pantry right now and they’re all terrible in one way or another. One is impossible to clean. One doesn’t fit in my car’s cupholder. One is top-heavy and tips over if you look at it. One has an obnoxious handle that just gets in the way. Each time, I thought “This time for sure!”, and each time it was a disappointment.

I carry my reusable cup in the outer pocket of my bike bag. I’d been in search of the right cup for a while, as it needs to fit in the bottle cage on my bike and not leak in that position. I found one made by Aladdin from recycled plastic that has a lid that snaps shut over the sipping hole and doesn’t leak. I tell baristas it’s a 12-ounce to address the “what size do I charge for?” question.

This has nothing to do with a 10¢ piece break, everything to do with my conscience. This doesn’t scale for behavioral change.

The benefit of the interchangeable cups between shops, in addition to the art factor, would be the visible message that *this is what people are doing*. Same signaling as the paper cup with the logo, turned around.

The Stojo looks interesting but doesn’t look as if it would fit the bottle cage.

Hi Barb, the Stojo actually will fit nicely into a bottle cage. But the current 12oz Pocket Cup wouldn’t be completely leak proof if you hit big bumps. The soon to be released Biggie has an improved seal and would fit well into your cage. FULL DISCLOSURE, I OWN STOJO, SO BIASED… BUT PASSIONATE AND AN AVID BROOKLYN BIKER.

Fortunately most cafes in Australia still have china or glass cups and mugs as a standard choice. Even McCafe usually has china cups available. Unfortunately, the disposable paper/plastic cups are becoming more obvious, but the reusable cups are mostly still available. I think it’s years since I have had a takeaway coffee. I sit down to drink my coffee in a ‘proper’ cup. If a cafe doesn’t have reusable cups I walk out and go to one that does. I don’t understand why people can’t sit down and drink their coffee.
I have never worked where I could buy coffee. If we wanted coffee or tea we boiled a kettle and made it ourselves, and then drank it in a china mug. Why can’t people still do that?
For interest, Starbucks failed in Australia and had to close most of their cafes. We already had better established cafes that served better (including not as weak) coffee. Cafes here are often individually owned, not chains.

Everyday I use to go to the coffee machine at the office and use a paper cup. I tried bringing a mug to work and I just couldn’t ever remember to bring it with me to the break room. Then my gf bough me a Star Wars Coffee Mug and I love it so much I never forget it.

I think thats the key find a mug you love that represents you or an idea you like and it will be much easier to always use the same cup.

Cardboard coffee mugs really make the coffee impersonal, drinking your coffee everyday from your cool coffee mug is something different entirely and it has an extraordinary effect on the environment, why would someone not do that, I can`t understand honestly, in no way is it more convenient not to create healthy habits, to me it makes absolutely no sense ! Regardless, a great article, thanks for sharing this !

Every person will drink a substance at work, no matter the job. Our waste is too vast (throw away cups) and must be controlled. Every one that could have a space to keep a reusable drink container should use one. Another great thing about having your own drink container is that it can be covered with a germ and dirt stopper, any thing that is open or has an opening like a straw, sippy lid or removed top will end up getting stuff on and in the drink.

The way to make this real is Google drink container protector and you will find a great reusable portable lid at a very low cost, and it will last for years keeping your drinks safe, even helps to keep hot and cool longer, it’s a keeper, not a throw away.

When you reuse your own drink container, and put a lid on it, you will keep stuff from filling up land fills, you’re be sick less, due to stopping things from getting in your drink, and save money, THINK.

Stay up to date on the Northwest's most important sustainability issues.

Research Areas

Founded in 1993, Sightline Institute is committed to making the Northwest a global model of sustainability, with strong communities, a green economy, and a healthy environment. We work to promote smart policy ideas and monitor the region's progress towards sustainability.